Anyone else been playing Cart Life? It’s available for free and purchase here and is getting some buzz over at the IGF for its narrative. I heard about it through Idle Thumbs.
Been playing Andrus’ story this past week. It ended in horrible tragedy once and reasonably well the second time but I don’t think I’m done tinkering with it. I kind of like that the game only gives you one week in the lives of these characters. You can help them manage their lives to the point where they are successful, barely keeping it together or, as happened on my first run, bring about total ruin.
I could elaborate but I guess I don’t want to spoil specifics as to what can happen as I’m not sure how variable it is. Seemed to be experiencing some of the same scripted moments in both of my play-throughs but I was still impressed by how directly my managing of Andrus’ finances impacts the storyline. Really clever game, late contender for one of my favorites of the year.
Hard to succinctly describe, but I guess its an adventure game blended with an economics simulation that focuses on (in Andrus’ case) a slightly older than middle-aged immigrant trying to run a small business in America. Its really low-key as far as games go and blends narrative and gameplay really smoothly.
Anyway, just want to start the ball on this one, think its a game worth talking about.
Never heard of this before. And from the website, it just looks like a cart food sales simulator, there’s no mention of all this life changing story stuff. I guess that’s on purpose though, huh? Gonna download it and check it out. Thanks!
It is incredibly buggy but well worth the effort of muddling through. It really captures a slice of life type feeling that few games attempt and even fewer succeed at. Unlike most other games that try to tell a story, there is an actual game here as well.
Yeah, the bugs are killing me. Tried to play a couple of times now and every time some bug has killed the game for me. Last try the mouse stopped responding inside the game and I wasn’t able to click anything so I had to kill the game and lose my save. I like what they’re trying to do here, but kinda hard to get into it when the game keeps crashing :(
While I have experienced a fair share of bugs as well, just the core vision of what this game is striving for is so interesting to me I can’t help but love it. I guess its a “critics game” but it really impressed me how well they linked the beats of the storyline with actual gameplay decisions I was making. The immediate investment in its characters as I was trusted with many facets of their lives…dunno, definitely want to see iterations and more design based on those ideas.
